McNair Lectures. The Rev. J. C. McNair endowed these lectures "to show the mutual bearings of science and theology. . . to prove the existence of attributes (as far as may be) of God from Nature." Despite the high seriousness and unquestionable value of the ethical insight in regard to human life which these lectures reveal, a fundamentalist citizen of North Carolina (where evolution is under a cloud) might well raise the moral issue as to whether the specific object of the endowment has been met by Dean Pound's lectures. There would also be a distinctly legal issue if the trustees disregarded the donor's direction that the lecturer must be "a member of some one of the evangelic denominations of Christians." But it is certainly a matter of wise social policy that scholars and universities devoted to the pursuit of impartial truth should exercise a high scrupulousness in accepting foundations to teach special doctrines by sectarian adherents.

MORRIS R. COHEN.

WE AND OUR GOVERNMENT. By Jeremiah Whipple Jenks and Rufus Daniel Smith. New York: The American Viewpoint Society. 1922. pp. 223. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, YESTERDAY, TODAY - AND TOMORROW? By James M. Beck. New York: George H. Doran Company. 1924. pp. 362.

FEDERAL CENTRALIZATION. By Walter Thompson. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1923. pp. vii, 399.

These are not law books. Nevertheless or consequently—they have much importance for lawyers, because what these books made for laymen show clearly to lawyers is the welcome and exciting fact that since the World War the public has taken, or at least by publishers is supposed to be taking, new interest in that system of social organization which lawyers operate and are sworn to uphold.

We and Our Government can be seen at a glance to be a really marvellous attempt to Americanize both the native-born and the immigrant. Here are hundreds of pictures, accompanied by text printed in various styles of type. The facts shown and the ways of showing them make this a book of absorbing interest to anyone who is already well acquainted with the governmental system. Whether immigrants and youth can be aroused to care for such matters is another question. Open the book at random and see what you find. Alongside a short essay on "The Need of Confidence are three pictures, showing respectively the interior of a grocery, the interior of a bank, and the exterior of the United States Treasury, with annotations to the effect that the grocer takes your check on the bank, the bank pays it, and the Treasury keeps a record of all money- the full lesson being the necessity of coöperation and trust. Again, here are pictures of police on duty and of a government expert testing foods, of a voting booth, of a city council chamber, a state legislative body, and the United States House of Representatives. Elsewhere you find the oath of allegiance, a diagram showing the inter-relation of all federal and state courts, a series of pictures tracing the care of the state government over the individual from the cradle to the grave. These random glances at the book give a one per cent sample of its contents. Further, this little volume contains the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and so much else that those who read the whole of it, or merely look at the pictures and the inscriptions under them, will gain so far as their intelligences permit, a vast amount of information on the theory and practice of our governmental system, national, state, and municipal. The tone is ex

pository, presenting the intent and machinery of the system and not entering into argument. At the end come questions and problems based on the text," with the accurate statement that "if you can answer correctly the following questions, you have the right to say, 'I know the main facts and fundamental principles regarding the government of the United States.'" Mr. Beck's book on The Constitution of the United States, Yesterday, Today - and Tomorrow, is in effect composed of two parts, one historical and the other philosophical. The historical part, after giving some of the chief facts, English and American, leading up to the framing of the Constitution, presents in a new and attractive form the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, using Madison's Debates as the basis, and supplementing Madison with items furnished by that historical imagination which is said to be an essential quality of a historian. Anyone who reads this account of the proceedings at Philadelphia is sure to remember Washington and Franklin as Mr. Beck has portrayed them, and to remember with equal clearness his account of the chief diversities in the opinions of the delegates. Mr. Beck's account distinctly adds to the reputations of James Madison, Edmund Randolph, George Mason, Luther Martin, and Elbridge Gerry, as constructive aids in the deliberations, although Madison was the only one of those delegates to sign the Constitution. Of Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Beck avers that "the imaginative supposition of later historians that he was the commanding and dominant figure in the Convention has nothing whatever to support it," saying of his chief speech that "it was not a helpful speech, for, apart from its gloomy predictions, it advocated extreme measures, which may have had a few admirers, but certainly had no supporters," and that "his extreme views, which virtually advocated an elective monarchy, simply accentuated opposition to any efficient national government," and then quoting pertinent passages from Madison's Debates. He makes still other unfavorable comments to the effect that Hamilton's attendance was slight and his influence slighter; but eventually he says that "if Hamilton's part in the Convention was not a considerable one, and was naturally proportioned to his years and public standing at that time, his services subsequent to the Convention in procuring its ratification not only by the State of New York but by other States cannot well be exaggerated." At this day the appraisal of the services performed by individual members of the Convention is so unimportant that discussion of such matters may seem useless; but the discussion is really serviceable, for it will induce some readers to make investigations in Madison's Debates and elsewhere, with the necessary result that the intents and acts of the Federal Convention as one entity will be more thoroughly perceived.

The philosophizing part of Mr. Beck's book is equally interesting, more fervid, and fortunately less convincing. The author is, it seems, in a sense a pessimist, though a pessimist of a conservative sort. He believes that the people of the United States are too extravagant, too thoughtless, too much interested in prize fights, too much given to jazz music and cubist art or the equivalent, too insistent upon controlling the acts of their legislators. Not in anger, but in sorrow, he infers that the country has departed from high ideals. His words are vivid, and nothing but reading them can impress upon the mind the arguments, analogies, and picturesque details. The lines of thought are somewhat different from those emphasized by pessimists of the radical school; but both schools agree that America is in peril. Surely it would be frivolous to say that, because prophets of opposite sorts predict disaster, there is no danger at all, and it would be equally frivolous to point out that the slight honor in which the two schools of prophets are regarded in their own country is found in the stock-market quotation of United States three and a half per cent bonds—just now somewhat over

IOI. No, even if one is to disagree with the prophets, it is better to read what they say.

Unquestionably the philosophical part of the book, being the work of a public speaker, has phraseology more emphatic than that habitually used by professional authors, that is to say by people who make their impression not through the ear but through the eye; but the reader who will disregard the occasionally somewhat oratorical form and look only at the substance will see that Mr. Beck has studied his subject carefully and has made useful contributions to thought and expression. Take, for example, his statement that the Constitution " was framed at the very end of the pastoral-agricultural age," that "while it was marvellously sagacious in what it provided, it was wise to the point of inspiration in what it left unprovided," that it "imposes powerful restraints on democracy," that "in safeguarding the moral rights of the people, it 'renders unto God the things that are God's,'" that the framers" were not so much concerned about the rights of man as about his duties, and their great purpose was to substitute for the visionary idealism of a rampant individualism the authority of law," that they "had a distaste for mere phrase-making, of which they had had a satiety, for the Constitution, in which there is not a wasted word, is as cold and dry a document as a problem in mathematics or a manual of parliamentary law," that "the Supreme Court is not only a court of justice, but in a qualified sense a continuous constitutional convention," that "the real problem is the adaptation of democracy to the changed conditions of society," that under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments "the difficulty has not been in the principles of constitutional law, but in their application to complex facts, and the ascertainment of those facts has put an impossible burden upon the Judiciary," and that "the system of governmental checks and balances has been destroyed by the persistent subordination, in the practical workings of the Government, of the Legislature to the Executive."

There is no space to quote further; but space must be taken to say that Mr. Beck, though holding definite views, has tried to be fair to his political opponents, and that, as his frequent eulogies of the Constitution and of the United States show, he really is an optimist.

Federal Centralization, though having in mind chiefly the general reader, cites almost two hundred decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and frequently discusses them at considerable length. As the subtitle says, this is "a study and criticism of the expanding scope of Congressional legislation." Every one knows that there is such an expansion, and that enough attention has not been given to the nature of it and to the question whether it has gone too far. Hence there is room for this book, and for many others. Not that anyone cares much for the abstract attitudes to which historians, politicians, and other imaginative persons have been pleased to give the names of States' Rights and National Rights. Those abstractions have probably never played so large a part in active life as theorists have depicted. The concrete question in the mind of the practical man, and still more of the practical woman, is merely whether the public welfare will be promoted by any suggested change in the rules governing organized society. Further, as to the history of changes, what the ordinary reader wishes to know is simply what changes have come to pass, and what the extraordinary reader wishes to know is what features of the Constitution of the United States have facilitated or retarded such changes as the public may have wished. Such, at least, seem to be the theories upon which the author has proceeded in making this volume. He gives for the ordinary reader an adequate picture of additions to federal activity. For the extraordinary reader he explains that such enlargements have come through using the clauses of the Constitution on commerce, taxation, and the postal service.

It is impossible to give a detailed account of the varied topics covered. In connection with possible enlargements of national functions the author appreciates fully the effect of the Child Labor Tax Case.1 He discusses well the constitutional problems regarding federal promotion of education. He describes the modes in which federal regulation of interstate transportation has enlarged federal activity and to some extent restricted the activity of the states. He answers in orthodox fashion the question whether Congress has police power. He covers in effect the whole ground. Yet, paradoxical as it may sound, the value of the book lies not so much in covering the whole ground as in indicating that there is more ground to cover, so that the reader is induced to make investigation for himself. The reader is inevitably led to think of numerous points regarding growth of national activity, some of them mentioned in this book and some not: the amendment terminating the power of states to refuse the ballot to women, the income tax amendment, the prohibition amendment, the scope, not yet fully understood, of the Department of Agriculture, the federal quarantine, and other health legislation, the federal Employers' Liability Act and Workmen's Compensation Act, the possibilities under Crandall v. Nevada,2 and In re Neagle, the restriction of property and speech in time of war, and so on. Finally the book raises in any reader's mind the question, though without mentioning it, whether simultaneously there has not been an equal growth of activity by the individual states.

These books are different, to be sure; but is it not obvious that from the lawyer's point of view they are harmonious indications of new interest in questions essentially lawyerlike-questions of principle as to the theory and details of the existing rules of social organization?

EUGENE WAMBAUGH.

NATIONAL PROHIBITION. The Volstead Act Annotated, and Digest of National and State Prohibition Decisions. By Arthur W. Blakemore. Second Edition. Albany: Mathew Bender & Co. 1925.

ΙΙΟΙ.

pp. xxxiv,

It is the truth to say, as so frequently is said by publishers, that the second edition is much enlarged. This is so in all its dimensions. But this is only what might naturally be expected. In the period of a little more than two years, between the first and second editions, the law has been developed by numerous decisions of the courts, some new laws, many regulations, and one important treaty, all of which are referred to in the preface and dealt with in the body of the work.

The preface is dated January 2, 1925, and the work of the author must have continued to the moment of going to press, because a casual reference to the table of cases reveals citations of cases reported in Volumes 265 United States, 298 Federal Reporter, and 246 Massachusetts, and apparently no important case has been overlooked.

As in the first edition, the author starts with the Eighteenth Amendment, and then goes to the decisions on its validity and construction, with its effect on state laws, double jeopardy, shipping, and civil remedies. After that follows the Volstead Act, with a discussion of its history and validity, and a section by section discussion, with a synopsis in which the history of

1 (Bailey v. Drexel), 259 U. S. 20 (1922).

2 6 Wall. (U. S.) 35 (1867).

3 135 U. S. 1 (1867).

each section is set out and the decisions are collected. The supplemental act of 1921, regulations, and forms complete the work.

The work is very frankly sympathetic with the views and contentions of the radical prohibitionists, and equally frankly critical and disparag ing of the opinions and official acts of those who have not risen to the heights of the prohibition extremists. Instances of this are frequent and striking. They touch the President of the United States, the Governor of New York, and the justices of the United States court in cases from Massachusetts.

"1

The first in point of time, although not in order of the text, is President Wilson's veto of the Volstead Act, which was passed over his veto. The author gives his estimate of the veto message as certainly not one of our great state papers.' In dealing with the doctrine that an offender against the liquor laws may be prosecuted for the same act by both federal and state authorities without violating the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy, he refers to a learned article severely criticizing this doctrine, and goes on to say: "The danger of double jeopardy, was one of the grounds given by Governor Smith of New York in signing the Act repealing the New York State Enforcement Act, in June, 1923.' "2 While this is doubtless true, and standing alone would not attract much attention, yet there is a latent sarcasm which becomes accentuated as the author proceeds and takes a fling at the President and the judges.

In what is apparently an abiding conviction, shared by nearly all the radical prohibitionists, that the Eighteenth Amendment ought to be permitted to override all the provisions of the Constitution, and especially the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, which declare the rights of man to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and from being compelled to give evidence against himself, the author comes to the decisions of the courts ordering the return of liquors unlawfully seized in an illegal search. Here he can no longer contain himself, and he goes on to express his feelings in this language: "The Editor of this book feels that the view must eventually prevail that it is simple nonsense for a court of law to order returned to a bootlegger his contraband liquor even though there was some technical defect in the search warrant, that this is one of the legal refinements which bring the law into contempt. The court in so doing is simply protecting and aiding the owner in his illegal business. Let him prove that he has a legal right to the possession." 3 But on the next page he rises to his climax and says: "The opposite doctrine is well stated in a recent case from Massachusetts where the courts have been staunch supporters of the more irrational view." 4

It is interesting to all who read this book, and perhaps inspiring to prosecuting attorneys, to find the author not only militant and crusading but also ready and willing to take his readers into his confidence in a spirit of prophecy, to the extent of expressing his own feeling of the view which must eventually prevail as to the rights of man in the conflict of the Eighteenth with the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. This is even more interesting than the writings of Professor Gray, who contented himself with a criticism of decisions which were not in accord with his idea of the law, but without such cheerful optimism and entire confidence that the erring courts would eventually come around to his way of thinking.

This is a comprehensive work, citing cases from all or nearly all of the jurisdictions within the United States. It will be helpful to lawyers all